Chris R

If you’ve ever spent time in an Apple store, the thing that grabs you is the sleekness of it. No CompUSA here, it is ultra modern with people wearing black shirts with white Apples on them. Sleek geeks if you will. I purchased a 20 inch iMac with great fanfare, quite excited about it. Upon using it, what was glaring to me was how the fonts looked. Somewhat shadowy, as if an adjustment needed to be made, very different from my other iMac. You can adjust this, to a point, in the system preferences, under Appearance and Displays. I’ve become quite familiar with them.

Michael came over to check it out and agreed that things did not look as sharp as perhaps they should. We called Mac support and after being guided thru the above named preferences (for the umpteenth time) it was decided that perhaps something may be wrong with the display. “Go to a store and look at another one” Michael wisely suggested. But as I had looked at one in the store, albeit before I seriously decided to buy one, I thought they looked better and decided to take mine back.

I entered the Apple store at the Chestnut Hill Mall and was ushered to the “Genius Bar”. Angry people returning computers and quite a few ipods inhabited the bar. Everyone had a story. No one could just say what was wrong with their computer, they had to say what they were doing when it crashed. Daniel, the “bartender” as it were, was very patient with all of them. To pass the time, I looked at the pictures of geniuses over the bar. There were 4, Jane Goodall with a monkey, Martin Luther King, John and Yoko, and the far left picture was of a man whom I did not recognize. I kept looking at the Goodall picture, and the monkey was looking up her shirt. I wondered which of them was supposed to be the genius.

When it was my turn Daniel said “how can I help you”.

“Who is the genius on the left?” I ask.

“Heisenberg”.

Silence.

“He was a physicist. That’s a young picture of him” (sweet Daniel thought that somehow that was the reason I didn’t recognize him).

“I thought it was Steve Jobs”.

Daniel laughs. “That would be very presumptuous”.

And we’re off and running. I explain to Daniel what my font issues are. He opens system preferences and does everything I had done previously. He did say you can’t use OS 9 fonts on the flat screen panels, they don’t look sharp. So he picked an OS X font, which still looked off to me. I ask Daniel to hook me up to the internet, so I could show him my email panel as this is where it was the most glaring. Daniel doesn’t think it looks off. So what do I decide to do, exactly what Michael had told me to do in the first place. I proceeded to have Daniel show me every single flat screen panel in the store. Lo and behold every one of them looked exactly as mine did. I ask Daniel if others return their computers for the same reason. “No, there’s nothing like a flat screen”. Great, I think to myself, my computers not damaged, I am.

I go back to the bar and look at my computer some more. Of course, by this time, the “bar” was full of other people, which was fine as I needed time. I begin to feel protective of my machine. I decide I need help with my decision. At 10 of 8 I call my friend Joe, who happens to be a psychologist. I figured I had this 10 minute window at the end of the hour to get him. But I had to call information for his number. I mention to information that he is a psychologist so she wouldn’t look for a residence, and I immediately realize that those at the bar think I’m calling my shrink for guidance regarding my decision. Alas, he doesn’t answer.

I then call Michael who, thank God, is available. We discuss the fonts. Michael tells me to give it time and think about it.

As I sat there obsessing about the fonts while admiring how beautiful the screen is, every sales person in the place came up to me and said “let me try one thing” and proceeded to go to the system preferences. I was too timid to say that had been done before as I thought perhaps a miracle would happen. One of the odder sales people even came over and swiveled my screen and said “this screen is so beautiful” and kissed it. He kissed my screen. “Don’t touch my screen” I say. And he did it again. “Beautiful” he repeats. My nerves. I say again “don’t touch my screen” and he proceeds to tell me that he washes all the screens in the store and tries to sell me screen cleaner.

Then I got my miracle. Or at least my realization. A customer at the bar next to me told me that he has two screens, a CRT and an LCD. He explains the scientific differences between the two (channelling Heisenberg perhaps?) and said it’s just a matter of preference. “You’ll get used to it”. He then tells me his story of why his computer was in there. I listened patiently and nodded sympathetically as that is what one does. At the bar.

I needed someone to tell me I’d get used to it. For some reason, I couldn’t come to this conclusion myself. But as soon as he said it, coupled with his affection for his own little lap top which though currently crippled he clearly loved, I was convinced that this baby was coming back home.

I call my husband, explained that all the machines were the same and mine wasn’t broken. “Why are you still there, just return it and come home. Don’t settle”. That not being what I wanted to hear I call Michael back and tell him my decision. “I’m taking it home”. He agrees that having it over the weekend and giving it more time is the wise choice, and admits his bemusement about my predicament. I’m just grateful he’s awake and validating.

When, two hours after I left the house, I come trudging in with same computer in hand, spouse looks at me. “No complaining about the screen” he said.

“Not to worry. I’m settled”.

Brian, Peter, Joan, and Michael
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Matthew typed, “ playstation 2 grinding noise,” into Google and found multiple sites, mostly message boards, with probable repairs for his game. He chose the repair that looked most promising, two pages of instructions beginning with, “This will fix your problem. You’re going to be surprised when you find out how easy this is.” Matt printed the instructions, picked up the Playstation and together we bounded upstairs.

The message board guy was right about one thing. The process of the repair was easy. Pop the cover of the Playstation, plug it back in, and, with the innards exposed – including, I might reluctantly add, all the electrical components- reset the toothy white disc that controls the angle of the DVD. The angle of the platter is critical to how smoothly the disc spins, and whether the laser beneath it will read information. You get either the game or the movie, Playstation doesn’t discriminate, or the dreaded and present, “No Data Read.”

To change that angle, we were supposed to rotate the white gear wheel an eight of turn, pop a disc in, see if it works, if not, continue to rotate by eighths, until it does. Except it never did. Matthew and I, lying flat on the bedroom floor, worked side by side. I used my screwdriver to pull the small metal stop away from the gear, and he’d use his to advance the wheel four notches. With each advance, we would look up expectantly at the TV, frown, then rotate a few more notches. We succeeded in getting the disc to spin almost chatter free, but not to play the DVD.

Diane called us down for dinner ( butternut squash, apple soup and spinach quiche) and before my first spoonful, I turned to Matthew and said, “What we need is an occasional success. If you had my father instead of me, you’d have nothing but successes.”

“But what about the BMW?”

“What about it?” I answered defensively, “It was the warped head he couldn’t fix, and he couldn’t find anyone he thought competent to grind it.”

Diane jumped in, “But I thought it was engine overheating that he couldn’t fix.”

“Oh yeah. Okay, that was a problem too and he never did figure that one out. So there is one, so-called failure, in fifty years. Matt, how many failures have we had?”

“You mean in the last week?”

Helen Josephine and Leroy O’connell, Malcolm and Helen Virginia Miller.
Helen in her wedding dress.
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Diane watched Bowling for Columbine Friday night, and Saturday morning deviated from her usual religious-like devotion to the Globe to describe most of the important scenes. One of them, the welfare mother who drives eighty miles to her two minimum wage jobs while her six year old, home without proper supervision, shoots his six year old playmate.

Reminded me of this scene from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Scout, in the first grade, complains to her father, Atticus, that Burris Ewell is forced to attend only the first day of school.

“Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are of the common folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of an exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go to school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, was permitted to hunt and trap our of season.

“Atticus, that’s bad,” I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out of season was a misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the populace.

“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit.”

“Mr. Ewell shouldn’t do that –.”

“Of course he shouldn’t, but he’ll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?”

Malcolm Miller – 1940
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Matthew and I worked for another half day on the BMW, tryiing to solve the starting problem. If we jump it, the car starts, but left to its own battery it cranks away in descending gasps. Dimitry suggested that we change both ground wires, and the only one left was the battery negative to the engine block. It’s attached in a near impossible to reach place, beneath the carburetor and behind a series of rubber hoses. But Matt, contorting his arms like Plastic Man of the Fantastic Four, managed to release the cable.

Thinking it was a corroded ground at the engine block, we (okay, I) decided to connect the new ground elsewhere. This time, near the shock strut, where it would be easier to reach. I know, the inescapable corollary is looking for a lost object, not where it was lost, but where the light is best. But I really thought the new ground was a good as the old. We sanded the nut and washer, scraped off all rust from the metal strut housing, and attached the cable. Matt then hopped in to start the car. Nothing. Or nothing beyond solid clicking sounds, as if the solenoid couldn’t engage the starter motor.

“Are you sure the new ground is a good as the old one?” Matt asked.

“We tested it with the ohm meter, and the needle moved, so I’m guessing it is.”

“How many times can you “guess” and have it be right? I mean, this is a car. Don’t things have to be more than guesses?”

“Good point, let’s flatten your arm with my framing hammer and see if you can put the cable back where it belongs.”

Matt squeezed his arm in again, and, with much effort and pain, screwed the cable to the block. This time the car did turnover, but with the same weak, cranky sounds.

No more guessing – next stop, Sawyer’s Automotive repair.

Christmas 1952 – Helen, Michael, Brian, Joan, Peter
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Adam Kibbe

Our family gets together but infrequently. Come high school age, the children of families such as ours were sent to school in the United States from our expatriate home in Venezuela, gone from the nucleus for many months at a time. With college, that gap widened to years, and as if by habit, we now do well to see each other every two or three years. Absurd by the live-near-or-with-mom-and-dad-until-they-die New England standards, but perfectly normal for those of us to whom those last two adjectives canít readily be applied.

My parents now live in the foothills of the Sandia mountains, which form the eastern border of Albuquerque, where I was born 43+ years ago. Not at this house. Nor even one that we can say exists anymore. We left ìThe Statesî when I was three months old, and after 20 years or so in Venezuela with my father in the employ of U.S. Steel, my parents returned to the last stateside city in which theyíd lived, and theyíve yet to leave again. This is their second — and likely last — house there, a sprawling old faux-adobe house once owned by Berke Breathed (he of Bloom County fame — Opus was often drawn in what is now my fatherís computer loft). From the entry side, one gazes immediately up at the mountains which give Albuquerque what grandeur it has.

Ivan met his ìsupernumeraryî great-grandparents this Christmas, and they he, and for the first time. The Boston Bunch — me, Tricia, Luke, Amy & Ivan — all caught a mid-morning flight out of Logan and were having supper that evening in the Southwest with Jack & Betty (Mark stayed home with his girlfriend, Michelle, and with other plans, and less in debt than heídíve been had he come — but he chauffeured, godbless him).

We traded generous presents, stayed up ìlateî (given the two-hour time difference) talking, especially around the dining table, and had many a memorable (good and bad) meal out. We visited the fabulous Albuquerque Aquarium, spent a night in a charming B&B in Santa Fe called The Four Kachinas, did a fiendish jigsaw puzzle in tag team shifts, and propped up the New Mexico economy with all manner of art purchases in both towns. And we took turns herding the two-year-old whirlwind that is Ivan. It was a visit rich in all kinds of ways, from the interwoven families and generations, and the spice of green and red chiles, to the pack of four coyotes that loped through the yard on their way up into the mountains one morning, much to Ivanís (and our) delight. Hard to say when next weíll meet again, and what challenges age and distance will add to the mix, but I feel more in touch with my roots and with all of my family for the experience.

Should you wish a few more images of our trip, click here. And Happy New Year to you all!!!

New Yearís eve, after many from-scratch margaritas, but before our sumptuous feast.
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Joan arrives and Brian acquires an alert, intelligent look.
I don’t believe the two events were related.
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Matthew told us tonight, about walking home the other afternoon. He was near the bend on Central St, maybe a half mile from home, when a a guy in a white sedan pulls to a stop and asks him, “Are you so and so?”

Matt replied, “No.”

The guy gives him a long look and then says,
“Well, you’re going to see something amazing, anyway.”

He then drives away, down the street and around the curve. Less than a minute later Matthew sees the same car approaching at about sixty miles an hour. When the car gets to almost where he is standing, the driver spins his steering wheel and does a perfect 180 degree, sliding turn, so that he is now in the opposite lane and heading back the way he came.

No more words are exchanged. Demonstration over, the guy in the car simply drives away.